Autumn is upon us, so I’m busting out all of my favorite fall records. First up: anything and everything Jill Tracy has ever touched with her long, thin, alabaster hands.

As can be plainly seen from this gorgeous music video for “Haunted by the Thought of You”, Madame Tracy is one classy dame. Cool as a cucumber. Who else do I know who could maintain such an unflappable air of poise and elegance as reanimated hearts, levitating chairs, creepy humanoid automata, and even the arse of Satan himself loom directly behind her? No one!

Jill Tracy performing live in NYC. Photo by Don Spiro.

I’ve been swooning over the Victorian parlor pianist/netherworld chanteuse ever since a video for her seminal song “The Fine Art of Poisoning” was released a few years back, but she’s been casting her Ghostly Gloom Glam Queen spell for well over a decade (since long before this latest incarnation of the “dark cabaret” movement picked up speed), always with unparalleled grace and sincerity.

The songs collected on her latest album The Bittersweet Constrain(two in particular: “Sell My Soul” and “Torture”) do indeed invoke a delicious sort of pleasure/pain, not unlike the burn of real wormwood absinthe trickling down the gullet; unsettling and exhilarating as receiving a languorous tongue bath from a black cat at midnight on some foggy, windswept moor. Highly recommended.

17 Responses to “Haunted by the Thought of Jill Tracy”

You might also want to check out an Italian act called Roma Amor. They do “folksy” cabaret…their album sounds exactly like walking by talented musicians plying their trade on some dusty side street in Old Europa. And they do a brilliant cover of Jacques Brel’s “Next.”

You see? This is why I have musical inadequacy issues. I hadn’t heard Jill Tracy in maybe eight years, and when you bring it up I immediately think of related artists, then a mix tape starting with Jill Tracy and descending into the Tiger Lillies doing “Harriet and the Matches”, only to discover that you’ve beat me to the punch.

@Mer…How cool. Have not had the pleasure to meet her yet but I try to see her play any time she’s in town. True she’s not of the cabaret style but that voice! I’m sure she could pull off the style if she was to embrace it…what a show that would be too.

“Yoyanos”…hahahah. Gotta admit it has a great ring to it. How about a “Make Mer’s last name sound as silly as possible” contest? I like your last name though…has that Mythical God & Supervillain/Supervillian quality to it.